The effect of opportunity costs on mental fatigue in labor/leisure tradeoffs

Abstract

Most people experience the feeling of mental fatigue on a daily basis. Previous research shows that mental fatigue impacts information processing and decision making. However, the proximal causes of mental fatigue are not yet well understood. In this research, we test the opportunity cost model of mental fatigue, which proposes that people become more fatigued when the next-best alternative to the current task is higher in value. In three preregistered experiments (total N = 300), participants repeatedly reported their current level of fatigue and chose to perform a paid labor task vs an unpaid leisure task. In Study 1, all participants were offered the same labor/leisure choice. In Studies 2 and 3, we manipulated the opportunity costs of a labor task through the value of an alternative leisure task. In all studies, we found that people were more likely to choose for leisure as they became more fatigued. We did not find that the manipulated leisure value influenced the amount of fatigue participants experienced nor the likelihood to choose for leisure. However, in exploratory analyses, we found (and replicated) that participants who reported to value the leisure task more got more fatigued during labor and less fatigued during leisure. Collectively, these results provide cautious support for the opportunity cost model, but they also show that cost-benefit analyses relating to labor and leisure tasks are fleeting.

The Temporal Dynamics of Opportunity Costs: A Normative Account of Cognitive Fatigue and Boredom

“…Thus, the agent is optimizing the intertemporal tradeoff between acting (providing a more immediate opportunity for reward) and replaying (providing an opportunity for greater but later reward). This insight may help to rationalize the labor and leisure tradeoff that has been described for cognitive control (Kool & Botvinick, 2014;Niyogi, Breton, et al, 2014;Inzlicht, Schmeichel, & Macrae, 2014;Dora, van Hooff, Geurts, Kompier, & Bijleveld, 2019). Results.…”

Labor/leisure decisions in their natural context: The case of the smartphone

“…Together, these results could indicate that the baseline value of the smartphone is not that high, whether all of its features are available or not, but that the value sharply increases with incoming notifications. Previous work suggests that the value of real-world leisure alternatives likely varies considerably from moment to moment (Dora et al, 2019;Kool & Botvinick, 2014;Kurzban et al, 2013); our findings suggest that smartphones substantially contribute to this variability in practice.…”

“…For example, people's labor/leisure decisions depend on the current value of labor (e.g., the monetary rewards that are tied to working; Kool & Botvinick, 2014) and the current value of leisure (e.g., having available a pleasant alternative to labor; Rom, Katzir, Diel, & Hofmann, 2019). Second, the feeling of fatigue seems to be a key driver of the decision to disengage from a demanding task, in that people are more likely to switch from labor to leisure when they feel more fatigued (Dora, van Hooff, Geurts, Kompier, & Bijleveld, 2019;Dora, van Hooff, Geurts, Kompier, & Bijleveld, 2020; see Hockey, 2011). Third, labor/leisure decisions are idiosyncratic, in that individual differences matter.…”

“…For example, people in higher need for cognition (i.e., people who value labor more) tend to choose labor even if the reward for labor is lower (Westbrook, Kester, & Braver, 2013). Moreover, people differ strongly in the relative value they assign to different leisure alternatives to the same labor task (Dora et al, 2019). Together, consistent with recent theories (Inzlicht et al, 2014;Kurzban et al, 2013;Shenhav et al, 2017), these studies suggest that labor/leisure decisions are determined by a cost-benefit analysis processthat does not necessarily take place within conscious awareness (Kurzban et al, 2013) in which people weigh the value of the current activity (e.g., labor) against the value of the next-best alternative (e.g., leisure).…”

“…In summary, with our design choices we strived to improve ecological validity; our study can thus help to advance understanding of labor/leisure decisions in their natural context (Clancey, 1997;Hutchins, 1995;Markman & Dietrich, 2000). We designed a choice task based on previous work on labor/ leisure decisions (Algermissen et al, 2019;Dora et al, 2019;Kool & Botvinick, 2014). In our task, participants can freely switch back and forth between a 2-back memory task (labor) and interacting with their own smartphone (leisure).…”